Saturday, May 30, 2015

Emotions are running high in the lead-up to a planned protest outside the Islamic Centre of York Region in Richmond Hill this weekend.

Organizers say hundreds of Iranian and Jewish Canadians and politicians will converge on Stouffville Sideroad in front of the Islamic Society of York Region to protest an event honouring the life and deeds of Ayatollah Khomeini.

“I am deeply saddened and disappointed that the commemoration of the 26th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's death and his brutal dictatorship is taking place in Richmond Hill, Ontario,” said Reza Moridi, Richmond Hill MPP and Canada’s first Iranian-Canadian provincial minister.

Moridi is one of several provincial and federal politicians expected to attend the protest Sunday afternoon.

“While freedom of assembly is the right of every citizen in our nation, I condemn the celebration of an individual that was responsible for the heinous deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iran,” Moridi said.

Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic in Iran, is recognized as having authorized the execution of thousands of political prisoners, the systematic torture, imprisonment and murder of political dissidents and the hostage-taking of 52 American diplomats....

...A group calling itself the Muslim Community of GTA will be hosting the event, An Awakening Against Global Injustice.

Zafar Bangash, head of the Islamic Society of York Region and director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, said 3-400 people are expected to take part, listening to speeches by “world renowned” speakers, panel discussions, and poetry, art and quiz competitions.

Bangash compared the event to others that honour good work done by heroes like Martin Luther King and Ghandi.

“It will be a reminder to us there is still a lot of injustice in the world and to see [Khomeini’s] contribution in trying to remove injustice.”

But Jason Kenney, Canada’s defence minister and another politician expected to attend the protest, sees it differently. He voiced his concern via social media last week:

When I first heard that students at my university had staged a protest over an essay I’d written in The ChronicleReview about sexual politics on campus — and that they were carrying mattresses and pillows — I was a bit nonplussed. For one thing, mattresses had become a symbol of student-on-student sexual-assault allegations, and I’d been writing about the new consensual-relations codes governing professor-student dating. Also, I’d been writing as a feminist. And I hadn’t sexually assaulted anyone. The whole thing seemed symbolically incoherent.

I would expect Tory will use this as a resume item on his re-election bid in 3 years. So far, Tory has lots of support from local media terrified at the prospect of a return of Rob Ford. But no one can actually name a single real accomplishment by Tory, unless a massive tax increase while the city's infrastructure continues to fall apart counts as an accomplishment.

Ben Levin, a former top bureaucrat in charge of education in Ontario and Manitoba has been sentenced to three years in prison on three separate charges related to child pornography.

Reading from her decision Madame Justice Heather McArthur said that any sentence involving child pornography must be strong enough to send a message to others that society will not accept the behaviour.

In Toronto, as well as other cities across Canada and around the world, Uber is battling taxi companies and civic governments over whether it’s a taxi company or a “just an app” – and whether it too should be regulated. Toronto is currently suing Uber Canada and nearly a dozen of its drivers have been charged with operating a taxi without a licence. The core question, though, should be: why do we regulate taxis in the first place?

Al Pacino... had signed up to be the narrator in the play [Hunger], which was scheduled to premier at the Bergen International Festival in May 2017.

It would then go on to play at Copenhagen’s Aveny-T theatre and at Aarhus Theatre.

"It is correct, he jumped at the last moment because he couldn’t come to terms with Knut Hamsun's support for the German occupiers and Nazism. We must respect that,” Jon Stephensen, Aveny-T’s manager,told BT.

Hamsun was a pioneer of psychological literature and an influence on writers as diverse as Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway.

However, during the Germany occupation of Norway, he became a firm supporter of the German war-effort, getting to know many of the highest ranking German officers, including Joseph Goebbels.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner has blamed Zionism for the circumstances that led to him and former Asian Football Confederation chief Mohammed Bin Hammam being forced out of world football.

Warner, 68, resigned from FIFA after ethics investigations were begun into a meeting he held with Bin Hammam where FIFA say payments were made to Caribbean soccer officials ahead of the election for FIFA president in June.

Qatari Bin Hammam was handed a lifetime ban by FIFA for his role in the affair while a number of Caribbean officials were given suspensions last week.

Bin Hammam was not immediately available for comment.

Trinadadian Warner says in a letter to the Trinidad Guardian, which will be published in full on Tuesday, he intends to speak out on the affair and highlighted who he felt was to blame for his downfall.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

...He's the only person to play both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes (he was also Sir Henry Baskerville). His characters have executed both Charles the First of England and Louis the Sixteenth of France (and, as a badass side note, Lee is so into the idea of public executions that in real life he can recite every official executioner in England since the 15th century). He's portrayed Englishmen, Egyptians, Spaniards, Transylvanians, Frenchmen, Greeks, Poles, Chinese, Indians, Italians, Wallachians, Romans, Germans, Arabs, Gypsies, and Russians, played the lead role in the biography of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, speaks English, German, Russian, Swedish, Italian, and French, can do any English accent he wants, and sings everything from opera and death metal in a hardcore bass voice. IMDB credits him with 274 acting roles, Guiness says he's appeared in more films than anyone ever, and the Oracle of Bacon lists him as the Center of the Hollywood Universe because anyone in history links to him in 2.59 steps (he links to Bacon in 1). If that's not enough, Lee's movies have grossed more than any actor ever – his top five alone grossed $4.4B (number two is Harrison ford with $3B) and that doesn't even include the new Hobbit stuff and whatever the fuck else he's got in the works. He's such a veteran pro that he filmed every single scene in Star Wars 3 in a single day, and even though he's never received a Best Actor nomination he's been in 4 movies nominated for Best Picture and he can rest assured that even the shittiest movie of his career is probably a fuck of a lot more entertaining than The English Patient...

I never heard of Action Bronson before today, but I checked out a few of his videos and find them totally inane. But that's what I expected.

Most people could probably figure out there were going to be some references to violent, grisly, disgusting imagery from someone who put out a Rap album called "Dr. Lecter" referencing the cannibal from Silence of the Lambs and featuring songs like "Brunch" and "Get off my P.P."

There might be, just maybe, a dozen rap songs I can stomach hearing more than once. As a musical genre, with only a few exceptions, like some Run DMC, some early NWA, the original Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and a few other examples, I find Rap to be almost completely asinine.

But what rap is, and the pervasiveness of misogyny and glorification of violence that runs through the entire genre is no secret. It's a genre with with hit songs by stars like Dr. Dre called "Bitches Ain't Shit." One of Rap's best known stars, Eminem, wrote a song in which he threatened to rape Iggy Azalea. I find it repugnant, so I don't buy it, don't listen to it, and in the unlikely event I ever become Prime Minister, I won't be having Dr. Dre or Charlie Angus performing any rap songs at the after-party following my swearing in.

All this begs the question, Where have these idiot Social Justice Wankers been the last 30 years?

Banning something they don't like, rather than choosing to ignore it, is the deplorable natural instinct of the Social Justice Wanker.

If you don't like Action Bronson or what he stands for, don't attend his concerts. An Action Bronson concert that only attracts a handful of people will put him out of business faster and more effectively than a petition trying to ban him for being offensive.

But then, that would deny the Social Justice Wankers their supreme joy of dictating to other people how to live.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Tuesday a revolutionary court in Tehran began trying Washington PostIran correspondent Jason Rezaian on charges of espionage. Rezaian, who has already been held for more than ten months, is but one of four American hostages which the Islamic Republic holds.

Former FBI agent Robert Levinson just passed his 3,000th day in Iranian prison.

Monday, on Memorial Day, retired U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati spent his 1,367thday in an Iranian prison. He was picked up by security in Tehran while visiting his grandmother. His visit was not careless; he had secured permission from the Iranian Interest Section in Washington, D.C., before making his trip.

Those who sanctimoniously denigrate Islam as a Death Cult or Suicide Cult point to some of that religion's tenets regarding jihad, and the supposed rewards for 'martyrdom' in the hereafter which encourage extremists to imagine death preferable to life.

However, if you compare western culture as a whole to Islamic cultures over the last two decades, it is abundantly clear that the west, and not Islam, is the one that has become dedicated to self-eradication.

Suicide bombing may poll moderately well worldwide among Muslims, yet in reality only a very, very tiny percentage of Muslims think highly enough of the practice to strap on explosives and fragmentize themselves, hoping to reassemble and deflower 72 virgins in the Great Beyond.

Notwithstanding the numerically insignificant few who blow themselves up, neither suicide nor lack of confidence are Islamic cultural flaws. Islam, as a culture, is self-affirming to the extent of exaggerating its achievements, and is supremely confident in its merits, righteousness, and ultimate conquest of the world.

On the other hand, we in the West, as a matter of cultural norm, have adopted institutional practices designed to belittle ourselves, denigrate our highest achievements, disparage our military strength and service, curse our cultural values, and appease anyone who finds us offensive.

No Islamic society is that suicidal.

Islamists are building armies and honoring those who are willing to die for their beliefs, while we mock and insult those among us brave enough to risk their lives in service of our values.

Madrassas throughout Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and dozens of other Muslim-majority countries, as well as Saudi and Iranian-funded Islamic schools in the west, aren't teaching their children that Islam is decadent and oppressive and needs reform, as we are in western education. They're teaching their children that they are vastly morally superior to the decadent west, and that the spread of Islam throughout the world is the only true way to achieve justice.

Islam's leaders also have the wisdom to take the long-view, which is vastly strategically superior to the shortsightedness of the west.

The leaders of Islamist terror movements like ISIS, Hamas, al Qaida, Hezbollah and the Taliban don't tell their followers that if they fail to achieve all their goals in a few years, then they should cut and run. Their timeline for success isn't in months, or years, or even decades. They are looking ahead in terms of generations and centuries.

To win in conflict, whether it be military or cultural, nation building is essential. If, at the end of World War 2, the western allies had not dedicated enough resources and determination to the rebuilding of Germany and Japan, a Nazi Fourth Reich and a resurgence of Imperial Japanese militarism almost certainly would have emerged from the vacuum left behind. It took years of perseverance to ensure that the victory over the Axis powers in the Second World War was not undone and even today, 70 years later, there are still dozens of US military bases in Germany and Japan.

But after a total military victory in Iraq that cost less in western human lives than a couple of bad hours in any single major battle in World War One, our stupidity and lack of foresight has led us to abandon Iraq to totalitarians. That's because we became impatient that after all of ten years, during which the US allowed Iran to exert major influence there, Iraq didn't miraculously turn into a Swiss-style democracy .

This should surprise no one. While the questioning and reform of society in order to correct injustices is laudable and something we must pursue, we have morphed into a culture that fetishizes self-deprecation, self-criticism and self-destruction for our perceived sins. This coincides with the adoption of a moral relativism that can endure no serious criticism of any culture except our own.

The difference between Islamic suicide bombers and western Social Justice Jihadists is that the suicide bomber is killing a few people to serve the aims of his society, whereas the typical Social Justice Jihadist is trying to tear down our society to improve his or her own personal self-esteem.

We in the west live in the wealthiest, most equitable, most technologically and socially advanced civilization in the history of the world. We act like there's no way that civilization could move backwards. Yet history teaches it can.

Romans in the Fifth Century thought exactly the same way as people dominating cultural and educational policy in the contemporary west.. The Western Roman Empire, prior to its destruction, became a multicultural society that allowed its military prowess to deteriorate, while surrounded by supposedly backwards Goths, Vandals and Visigoths who determinedly built their forces for generations following their defeats by the armies of the great Caesars. Roman leaders became so overconfident in their own superiority and ignorant of the lessons of history that they weakened the empire to the point that made its downfall inevitable, while thinking that if they were 'nice' to their enemies, they would leave Rome alone.

They didn't. The barbarians conquered Rome and it took the world over a thousand years to regain the technological and cultural advancements that the Romans had achieved.

As the Visigoths and Vandals sought the destruction of Rome, Islamists seek the destruction of the decadent western infidel culture. And our western, so-called "Social Justice" activists are doing everything they can to suppress criticism of those who want to conquer us.

A majority of Canadians in all regions, with the exception of British Columbia, felt Khadr remains a threat. Men were slightly more likely than women to see Khadr as a threat (57 to 54% respectively) and Canadians over 35 viewed Khadr as a great threat than Canadians under 35.

Among political party supporters, Conservatives (73%) were most likely to view Omar Khadr as a threat compared to NDP supporters (44%) and Liberal voters (39%).

Liberal voters were also more likely to support the court ruling that freed Khadr on bail while he appeals his conviction on war crimes before a US court.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh met with Middle Eastern, North African, Muslim and South Asian students in a private meeting in the Michigan Union on Wednesday to discuss the University’s April screening of the movie “American Sniper,” a film based on the autobiography of former U.S. Navy Seal Chris Kyle.E-mails obtained by the Daily sent Tuesday to listservs for various student organizations — including Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, the Middle East and Arab Network, the Arab Students Association, the South Asian Awareness Network, Michigan Pakistanis, and Muslim, Lebanese, Malaysian and Persian students — announced plans for the meeting. The e-mails said several students requested the meeting in response to a tweet Harbaugh sent April 8 regarding the movie.

“Michigan Football will watch ‘American Sniper’! Proud of Chris Kyle & Proud to be an American & if that offends anybody then so be it!” the tweet read.

Harbaugh’s tweet came amid national media coverage of the Center for Campus Involvement’s April 7 announcementthat it would cancel the movie’s screening scheduled for April 10’s UMix. The CCI said it made the decision in response to a student petition that raised concerns about how the film portrays Arabs, Muslims, the Middle East and North Africa.

It's hardly a surprise that Ryan, who wants to tell the government of Ontario how it should spend money, can't come close to balancing the books of an organization he heads. It's also no wonder that Ryan is so furiously opposed to a government Bill that would require unions to tell their members and the public just how they spend the tax-free union dues they reap.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Hide your kids and hide your wives, because America's most unhinged conspiracy theorist - a man who makesAlex Joneslook grounded - is coming to Canada's largest city.Iranian-Canadian activist Shabnam Assadollahi spotted this announcement on Facebook, promoting an event at the Islamic Centre of York Region on May 31 honouring the Ayatollah Khomeini.

It's the Ayatollah stuff that got Assadollahi's attention, but the name "Dr. Kevin Barrett" is the one that stood out for me. Barrett is a former University of Wisconsin professor who briefly gained national attention for promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories. From there it's been a descent into complete and utter madness.

Hussein Hamdani, a Canadian lawyer, described his excitement and nervousness over meeting Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin in Gaza. The article, published in 2004, was part of a tribute to Yassin after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

Hamdani calls Yassin "the people's Shaykh" and explains that Yassin was part of a group of Hamas founders who decided "armed struggle must be established" against Israel. "It was like sitting at the feet of history," Hamdani glowingly wrote about meeting one of his heroes. Yassin's vision "represented the hope that the occupying forces could be defeated."

One year after openly embracing a jihadist movement in writing, Hamdani was named to a Canadian national security roundtable, where he continued to serve until being suspended April 29 pending an investigation. A spokesperson for Canada's Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said that although questions about Hussein's "radical ideology have circulated for some time, it was hoped that he could be a positive influence to promote Canadian values in the Muslim community. It is now becoming clear this may not have been the case.

There was the time when, 19 and naïve, I was guilt-tripped into entirely unwanted physical intimacies with a much older married man. And the time, three or four years later, when I went to visit an on-and-off long-distance boyfriend and quickly realized that it was over for me—but he assumed we were still on, and I didn’t have the nerve to say no to sex. And the time I told a man, “Look, I’m not going to sleep with you,” and it was taken as “try again in a couple of hours.”

When they happened, my view of these encounters ranged from “a mistake” to “it’s complicated.” It still does—even though, these days, we are encouragedto reinterpret such experiences as sexual violations. To manyfeminists, stories like these are evidence of a pervasive, misogynistic rape culture. “Kids see movies where there’s an aggressor who gets pushed away, but keeps trying until the girl relents,” writes advocate, author, and filmmaker Kelly Kend. “This is a rape dynamic that has been played off countless times as just how it works.” Canadian feminist author Anne Theriault laments “the still-pervasive and very flawed idea that if she doesn’t say no, it’s not rape”—clearly referring not just to attacks involving violence or incapacitation (for which few would demand a verbal “no” as proof of rape), but encounters in which a woman yields to unwanted overtures.To me, this crusade against “rape culture” over-simplifies the vast complexity of human sexual interaction, conflating criminal sexual acts like coercion by physical force, threat or incapacitation—which should obviously be prosecuted and punished whenever possible—with bad behavior.

Was I a victim? Even in the first incident, in which the man knowingly pressured me into something I didn’t want, I could have safely said no. Consent for bad reasons is still consent; despicable behavior is not always criminal. (Getting guilt-tripped into giving money to a freeloading friend is not robbery.) In the second instance, it would be an infantilizing insult to deny my responsibility for a mutual misunderstanding. In the third, what happened was not only consensual but wanted; my initial “no” was sincere, but it was mainly an attempt to stop myself from acting on an attraction against my better judgment.

Besides, I know that sometimes the roles were reversed. There was the ex-boyfriend I thought I was seducing in the hope of getting him back—only to realize, the one time he finally said no harshly enough, that it had been more pressure than seduction. There was the man who told me it was too soon for us to get involved, and said, “we shouldn’t be doing this” more than once the evening we first went to bed. If I were to claim victimhood, I would either have to admit to being a perpetrator as well, or fall back on a blatantly sexist double standard....

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

It doesn't seem to have occurred to Social Justice Wankers upset about Game of Thrones that its depiction of a marital rape wasn't any more of an endorsement of it than MacBeth is an endorsement of murdering your house guests:

As anyone familiar with the series knows, Game of Thrones is grisly – perhaps the grisliest show of the decade. In virtually every episode, a character, usually a bloke, is brutally murdered, tortured or mutilated. Limbs are hewn from bodies, heads are severed from necks, and skin is flayed from living flesh.

In one scene, a Lannister knight crushes the skull of a Dornish Prince with his bare hands, sending blood and brains everywhere. Another character, the Stark turncoat Theon Greyjoy, endures many gruesome scenes of graphic torture before having his dick lopped off by the sadistic villain Ramsay Bolton.

That’s all fine, of course. Everyone accepts that Game of Thrones is a series that prides itself on graphic hyper-realism. It was never intended to cater to the faint-hearted, which is why, although the show is famous for shocking spectacle, such as the infamously bloody “Red Wedding”, its gratuitous violence has not historically generated any moral outrage.

No-one has accused the show’s creators of being “bad people” for staying true to the brutal world of the books.

Trigger warning: This column will include discussion of ideas that may conflict with your own.

Those accustomed to reading or listening only to liberal commentators may not be aware of “trigger warnings” and “safe zones” on college campuses.

It seems that mostly conservative sites and writers are concerned with the increasingly draconian suppression of free speech on college campuses. But then, it is mostly conservative writers and speakers who are treated as though they’re bringing the Ebola virus rather than contrarian ideas to the sensitive ears of what we may as well name the “Swaddled Generation.”

A trigger warning is usually conveyed on a sign carried or posted near the auditorium where a speech is to be given, alerting students to the possibility that the speaker may express an idea that could trigger an emotional response. A discussion about campus rape statistics, for example, might cause a rape victim to suffer.

When my son was younger, we had an extensive arsenal of super soakers and various water gun weaponry ranging from water canons all the way down to hand-held water pistols. On warm days towards and during summer, his friends, both boys and girls, would appear by the droves to have water gun fights in our back yard (usually spilling onto the front yard and sidewalk). The air was filled with gleeful shrieking, and kids would be running in and out of the house to reload from the kitchen and washroom taps if there was a lineup for the outdoor hose tap.

No one was ever hurt, they had more fun than can be described, and not one of those kids has gone on to commit a gun crime (or any sort of crime as far as I'm aware).

I did the same thing when I was a kid, but thanks to our generation of politically-correct Social Justice Wankers, another one of childhood's joys is being taken away:

..According to The Washington Post, The Scouts have banned water gun fights in its list of 'approved activities' for its members.

Scout Blogger Bryan Wendell posted that, “As summer — and pool weather! — lingers on the horizon, it’s a good time to remind you that BSA policies prohibit pointing simulated firearms at people.”

He then listed off a number of reasons why water guns are banned.

“Pointing any type of firearm or simulated firearm at any individual is unauthorized. Scout units may plan or participate in paintball, laser tag or similar events where participants shoot at targets that are neither living nor human representations,” he wrote citing the Guide to Safe Scouting...

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

In Canada, we should be cutting funds to Universities whose Student Unions vote for boycott Israel in an amount commensurate to what the universities give those student unions in funds and facilities/services.

The significance of the bill cannot be underestimated. European countries have in recent years been whispering dark threats in corporate ears about the “legal and economic risks” of doing business with Israeli companies. The vagueness of these warnings is a testament to their legal groundlessness. But such scare tactics could not help but affect, at the margin, corporate decision-making. Now, the EU will – if it is honest – have to warn businesses of the legal and economic risks of consciously refusing to do business with such Israeli companies.

More generally, the Illinois bill is part of a broad political revulsion over the long-simmering BDS movement (“Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” – the strategy of economic warfare and delegitimization against Israel). While BDS has gotten most of its successes with low-hanging fruit like British academic unions and pop singers, the anti-boycott efforts are getting an enthusiastic reception in real governments, on the state and federal level. And that is because the message of the BDS movement – Israel as a uniquely villainous state – is fundamentally rejected by the vast majority of Americans...

Millions of tiny spiders recently fell from the sky in Australia, alarming residents whose properties were suddenly covered with not only the creepy critters, but also mounds of their silky threads. But that's not where the frightful news ends: Experts say that such arachnid rains aren't as uncommon as you might think.

A New York City arts center has canceled a planned event intended to protest censorship after one of the scheduled plays, “‘Mohammed’ Gets A Boner,” was deemed too offensive to Muslims.

“Playwrights for a Cause” was scheduled to be held at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture on June 14, and was supposed to feature four short plays about censorship in art. In addition, revenue from the event was supposed to benefit the National Coalition Against Censorship.

Instead, the entire event has been canceled, thanks to one of the four entries. “‘Mohammed’ Gets A Boner” is a one-man performance by screenwriter Neil LaBute written specifically for the event. Its description makes it clear the play is intended to be somewhat shocking:

”The prophet “Mohammed” stands on a barren stage, recalling the first time he made love to a white woman. Is this reality or a theatrical convention? Where do the lines between ‘satire’ and ‘censorship’ intersect or is nothing sacred when it comes to the theater?”

The abortion debate was effectively settled in Canada by a 1988
Supreme Court ruling that struck down the previous law pertaining to it as unconstitutional.
Since then, Canada has no criminal law on the books regarding abortion, despite
the best efforts of anti-abortion activists to re-impose one.

The final nail in the coffin of the
movement to re-criminalize abortion came when Stephen Harper declared in 2011
that his government would not reopen the abortion debate nor bring forward any
legislation on it.

Harper is as conservative a Prime Minister
that Canada has had in many years. Some might reasonably argue that Paul Martin
was more conservative on fiscal matters, but overall Stephen Harper is the best
that Canadian "small 'c' conservatives realistically could have hoped for.
And Harper came to the conclusion that legislatively touching the abortion
issue is suicidal. That should have told the anti-abortion movement something.
Evidently they haven't heard it.

I know quite a few people who are
adamantly opposed to abortion. Some are exceptionally bright and are motivated
by a belief in the sanctity of, and respect for, human life. Others are batshit
crazy, have had abortions they regret, and became so wracked with guilt that
they subsequently devoted their entire beings to taking a choice away from
others because they lacked the foresight to understand the ramifications of a
choice they made. I'm firmly of the opinion that having the abortions didn't
make them unbalanced, it just provided a convenient scapegoat on which to pin
their angst. Talking to that kind of sanctimonious anti-abortion activist is as
tedious as listening to an ex-alcoholic who demands universal temperance
because he couldn't handle his booze.

Both sides in Canada's abortion debate
exhibit tidal waves of hypocrisy, so before we get further into the subject,
let's deal with the dishonest way both sides characterize, not their opponents,
but themselves.

Both "pro-life" and
"pro-choice" are bullshit terms coming from the people who lay claim
to them.

I know way too many self-described
"pro-life" people who are adamantly in favor of the death penalty for
that term to reasonably apply to them.

The same strain of hypocrisy runs even
stronger in the so called "pro-choice" camp. When, ever, has anyone
seen an allegedly "pro-choice" activist campaign for any choice in
the matter butto
havean abortion? I've never heard of one
campaign for the right of womennotto have forced abortions, as China and India imposed on some
women.

In fact,there's
a campaign going on right nowto remove ads from Toronto's public transit system which encourage
women to consider adoption if they find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. The
ads, which promote an alternative choice, are incomprehensibly characterized by
pro-abortion activists as "anti-choice."

I can only surmise the people behind that
campaign are actual imbeciles or have some mental illness by which they're
emotionally invested in the destruction of human fetuses and feel they get a
point for each abortion, commensurate to a point in a debating contest.

So let's call things what they are. People
aren't "pro-choice" or "pro-life." They are either
pro-abortion or anti-abortion, and I say that as someone who is pro-abortion,
in that I support a woman's legal right to have a safe abortion. But just
because I'm in favor of legal abortions doesn't mean I'm not disgusted by the
far-left's efforts on campuses and in the public sphere to try to deny anti-abortion
activists their right to free speech and to make a moral case.

The moral argument against abortion,
particularly late-term ones, is frequently persuasive. The way the law, or more
precisely the lack of one, stands right now, you can destroy a fetus ten
seconds before birth and it's a medical procedure, but ten seconds later the
same act is murder. In practical terms, it's virtually impossible to find a
doctor in Canada who would perform an abortion that late in the pregnancy
unless the mother's life were threatened. But legally, there's nothing to
prevent it from happening.

However, for me, the 'life begins at
conception' argument is not particularly persuasive. Technically, that may be
true, and yes, there is a little heartbeat at five weeks of gestation. But as
far as that goes, I've been responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of deaths
of living beings far more sentient and with more practical intelligence than a
human fetus. There are innumerable chickens, tuna, salmon, cows, pigs and a few
other animals that are no longer alive because I think they're tasty if cooked
properly. (Although I pretty much eliminated pig from my diet after I sawBabe.) I'd be willing to bet real money that
most anti-abortion activists are not vegetarians. The comparison between a
human fetus and a living cow will no doubt offend some no end, but there you
have it.

For me, what's more offensive are laws
that some people are trying to impose on women telling them what they can and
cannot do with their own bodies. You have the right to make any moral case you
want, but trying to invoke the power of the state in that circumstance is as
much a violation of basic rights as it would be if the state forced people into
being live donors for organ and tissue transplants.

What the activists who want to
re-criminalize abortion fail to realize is that not only have they lost the
war, but by continuing to fight a losing cause, they have become so toxic that
they are harming their own side in other causes they would want to see succeed.
The anti-abortion movement has become hemlock in Canadian politics and no
serious conservative politician who is trying to be a leader wants to drink it.

If there's a battle for the anti-abortion
side to fight, it's the fight to be able to exercise their rights on campuses
and elsewhere to free speech. Even as someone who supports legal abortion,
that's a battle in which I side with them, and one they might actually win.

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, we'd have a condescending president who looked down on his female critics as "little ladies" who didn't understand how the world works. And they were right! I voted for Romney, and, well, keep reading.

Sure, we wound up with President Obama, not with Mitt. But that didn't change how things turned out. Just ask National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill. Right before Obama's trade bill cratered in the Senate last week, Obama complained that its chief Senate critic, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., didn't understand the real world. O'Neill then chalked Obama's attitude up to sexism...

TORONTO -- The widow of an American special forces soldier killed in Afghanistan and another soldier partially blinded by a hand grenade have moved to finalize a default civil-suit judgment against former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr.

Court documents filed in Utah April 24, the day an Alberta court granted Khadr bail, show the plaintiffs are asking the courts to award them triple damages for a total of US$134.1 million.

Lawyer Laura Tanner, who represents Tabitha Speer and Layne Morris, said in an interview she would be filing a final order for the federal judge to review and sign within days...

...While Khadr is essentially penniless, having spent almost 13 years behind bars before finally being released on bail earlier this month, he is in the process of suing the federal government for $20 million for alleged violations of his civil rights.

In their suit, Speer asks for US$39.5 million and Morris for $5.2 million -- but argue the damages should be tripled under an American law on victims of international terrorism.

Social Justice Wankers have something new to get smoke steaming out of their ears and their self-righteous fingers furiously tapping away on their keyboards to register outrage on twitter and facebook.

Louis C.K.'s monologue for Saturday Night Live last night included jokes about being 'mildly racist' and child molestation.

What's ironic and funny about the "controversy" is that C.K.'s Saturday Night Live routine covered content that has more or less been a staple of the hit cartoon series Family Guy for over a decade. Fortunately, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane and the Fox network which broadcasts his show apparently don't give a shit about what Social Justice Wankers think, and go out of their way to provoke them.

We all should be doing that.

By the way, if you check out C.K.'s routine from last night in the video above, you might just find that it's pretty hilarious.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

I’ve seen the captious phrase “white privilege” — a camp neologism by my reading — very often lately. It emerges from the intellectual marshes of social justice “educators,” a typical pseudo-concept from that roiling pastiche of academic pursuit.

At base this nonsense asserts that white people come equipped — habited as it were — with all sorts of advantage, opportunities, easy dealing, and in general a faster better reach for the good things of life than human beings less pale. The phrase has not surprisingly spawned a slogan — after all, what academic discipline doesn’t aspire to the abrupt short-thought of a bumper sticker? — Check Your Privilege. Which translates into a hectoring from social justice warriors, as they so deliriously style themselves, for white people to stand back and tabulate with tearful guilt the infinite advantages that result from their epidermal good luck.

IN 2013 Barack Obama made an unsavoury bargain with Bashar Assad, brokered by Russia, the latter’s ally. America went back on its pledge to strike Mr Assad’s regime for having used sarin against Syrians in Damascus that summer (something Mr Assad denies). In return the regime agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons programme.

Friday, May 15, 2015

If intelligence is something that is quantifiable and can be ranked, then the last week's news cycle is an apt reminder that half the population has below-average intelligence.

The metamorphosis of the ridiculous non-happening of a yob at a soccer game shouting an obscene phrase into a microphone into a maelstrom of collective sanctimony demonstrates that there is a surfeit of stupid Canadians. And I'm not just talking about the yob and his ilk.

By any objective measure, someone wearing his corporate uniform and furiously, sincerely calling for the genocide of an entire people in public, on television, would be greater cause for dismissal than someone who, when questioned about a stupid sexist phrase, made some stupid sexist remarks.

But that's not how it worked in Canada last week. When a Toronto public transit employee, while wearing his Toronto Transit Commission uniform, called for a genocide of Jews in Israel, there was no massive movement by Social Justice Wankers to have criminal charges brought against him or to have him fired. All that happened to him was that he was told to take three Rae days, as unpaid vacation time in the Ontario civil service has come to be called.

I'm not making excuses for the "FHRITP" morons. The people who do it are clearly imbeciles. But what's worse is the self-righteous posturing and the piling on to denounce them as if the entire arena of Canadian social and mainstream media has devolved into a Stalinist show trial.

"Hey ladies, I just want you to know that all men aren't like those scum. There are guys like me who respect women and would never do anything like that. I'm glad one was fired and they should face charges." That's the type of comment that's been appearing on facebook threads throughout Canada and in some ways, it's even creepier than the "FHRITP" stupidity. Anyone who's familiar with these ostentatious male feminists knows that they're slimy characters who are as sexist as the droogs in AClockwork Orange, but because they're beta male douchebags, rely on Grima Wormtongue sleaziness to try to lure women.

Of course, most men aren't running around shouting vulgarities at women. Almost all women already know that.

However a little more perspective and a lot less hypocrisy would be nice. Plenty of the exact same people who are enthusiastic supporters of Omar Khadr, and are apoplectic that the Harper government would want to keep him in prison, are now leading the charge to pillory some imbecile just for making asinine comments supporting a vulgarian. Think about it. They are not just forgiving, but outright supportive of an unrepentant murderer and terrorist jihadi, yet are completely outraged and want the full force of the justice system and social ostracism to descend on a halfwit for pulling the equivalent of a frat-boy prank.

It's natural that TV media would want to shame the "FHRITP" attention-seekers out of existence. They have become a significant inconvenience for TV news reporters. But a vulgar joke trend is hardly a major issue, and the way that so many gullible Canadians were so easily manipulated into outrage in order to serve the media's interest reaffirms that Orwell was indeed right about us.

If municipal and provincial election results throughout Canada over the last year weren't proof enough, this is just more evidence that we live in a society of idiots. Not that we should be surprised by that in any way, since we live in a society that glorifies idiots like Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. We make stupid people rich and famous just for being stupid in public, and you know we do, because you recognize the names Mama June and Honey Boo Boo. We have only ourselves to blame that there are throngs anxious to join the ranks of celebrity morons by any means possible.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

CAMP DAVID, Md. — President Obama on Thursday offered Saudi Arabiaand smaller states in the Arab world new defenses against potential missile attacks and maritime and cyberthreats from Iran, an effort to allay their fears that a nuclear accord with Tehran will empower their main rival in the Middle East.